Tuesday, November 26, 2013

“Am I really happy?” was the question that I posed to
myself after reading Deepak Chatterjee’s book ‘Are You Really Happy?’ If I had
been asked ‘Are you happy?’ I would have found it easier to answer for there
have been moments when I did feel happy, but these moments like others had
always moved on to be replaced by other feelings. So when he says ‘Really
happy’, I understand it as a more permanent state, the key word being ‘really’.
A state one reaches after a journey through pain, fear, anxiety and having
understood and risen above such feelings to a state of eternal bliss.

When he let’s us have a peek into the factors that
pushed him on his quest to ‘Fundamental Happiness’, I could immediately connect
and empathise for my journey has been similar and I suppose it is true to many
of us also. While most have been overwhelmed by their experiences, compromised
and settled down with whatever life has to offer, Deepak has chosen to share
the solutions that have helped him overcome his anxieties, his fear of death
and nothingness.

By classification this would fall under the category
of ‘self help’ books. I have myself kept away from such literature for I have
always felt that ultimately each individual will strive to find his own way to
happiness or whatever he understands of it. But the sharing of experiences does
matter for it could trigger that something which you recognise as a path you
have tread and opens up alternate possibilities to achieve your goal. I did
read Deepak’s ‘Fundamental Happiness’ till the end, not only since it struck a
chord in me, but because I found lucidity and a sincerity of purpose in his
presentation. He wants to help.

When he talks of ‘Fundamental Happiness’ my
understanding is, that it lies at the core of each individual and can be
discovered only through an inward journey starting with our normal existence
which is always covered with a security blanket (the diagram on page 67) and
which is the cause of ‘Fundamental Unhappiness’. The only way forward is by
shedding these layers you can achieve fundamental happiness. Fundamental as I
understand is the basic state of existence and that defines the characteristics
of the subject in question. So I personally have an objection to the use of the
word ‘Fundamental Unhappiness’. At the core we are all in a state of bliss and
that could be the only true state of our existence. This is covered by all our
negative feelings- as per what he calls as our security blanket. Throw away the
coverings and you find yourself and this is what Deepak is trying to say. But
it was interesting to note his point of view that one should stop one step
below the ultimate ‘Fundamental Happiness’. That is the step of – authenticity,
higher vision, depth, richness, insight and practically no pain and this helped
him immensely in his leadership positions, including his current role as a CEO.
This is a very positive and constructive suggestion for he realises that it is
necessary for us to be as authentic as possible in our present roles which we
cannot shirk and go away into the forests like the Buddha did in search of
‘Nirvana’, after all we are lesser mortals.

The author is to a large extent influenced by
existential thought and like the later existentialists like Sartre tries to
find a solution in the authenticity of our living. Existentialism dwells on the
sense of the meaninglessness and nothingness of human existence and the anxiety
and depression which pervade each human life. Whether it is the Buddha or Kierkegaard
the starting point for their quest to the meaning in life has been human
anxiety. While the Buddha attained that state of ultimate bliss or Nirvana and
sought to disseminate it to all through his eight fold path leading to the
cessation of suffering and achieving self awareness, Kierkegaard or for the
other existentialists there is no such thing as an ultimate state of bliss.
They sought ways of overcoming this anxiety which they recognised as the basic
human condition. For me the classic examples of existential angst and
redemption have been Sartre’s ‘Nausea’ and Camus’s ‘The Outsider’.

Deepak does elaborate on the basic dilemma that an
individual finds himself, in trying to breakaway from the shackles that bind
him. He says that this is a waiting game “We are either in the future, waiting
for something, or we dwell in the past. Future causes anxiety and past creates
depression”. He gives the example of Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’. I was also
reminded of Kafka’s ‘The Castle’ and the ‘Trial’. He also talks of shedding of
attachments and surrender as a manifestation of wisdom. In this sense I would
call him a religious existentialist.

The Chapter 20 which comes at the end ‘Death’ I would
say is the starting point and the motivation for this book. In his own words –

“This fear of death gave way to more fundamental and
unanswered questions within me about the meaning of life, aimlessness, search
for ultimate fulfilment and then on to depression, anxiety and emptiness.”

He ends this chapter by saying “We might be very
effective in avoiding the deep fear, but the fact that death remains a mystery
for mankind cannot be denied”.

The book is an easy read and easy to connect. Whether
all what he says is attainable or not there is no doubting the author’s
honesty.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Over the past few months there have been two
book releases which interested me. They are the ‘Fall’ by Vijay Raghav and ‘Are
you Really Happy?’ by Deepak Chatterjee. Both colleagues and who I know. Both
bankers by profession and serving in the financial services industry and in
that sense they fall in to the club of Ravi Subramanian who though is an award
winning author of a number of popular thrillers about banking and bankers.
These two writers are first timers and their genre is entirely different. While
the ‘Fall’ belongs to the love murder-mystery thrillers, the second is a more serious
and introspective work. I decided to write a review of ‘Fall’ first, reserving
the latter for a subsequent post.

I was intrigued by the title ‘Fall’. To me
‘The Fall’ by Albert Camus has been a bible and it was only natural that my
attention was drawn to the book. In the first page the author defines ‘Fall’ as
- to descend freely by the force of gravity, to hang freely or to drop oneself
to a lower level. But I presume that the author decided on this title from his
own prose-poetry ‘Autumn Leaves’ which is central to the theme of his novel. Autumn
has always been associated with introspection and in poetry is associated with
melancholy. As the leaves wither away and the tree stands stripped of all its
grandeur to be slowly covered by the snow of winter, one is overcome by a
feeling of sorrow at the process of aging and approaching death. The book
starts in early spring and ends with the onset of winter and in that sense
moving through all the stages of love, passion, glory, decay and death.

This book is a love murder-mystery thriller
and as such is not open to serious introspection. It has been written solely
for the purpose of engaging the reader only for that period of time till he
finishes it. In this the author has succeeded, for the book is well crafted and
written in a very lucid style. It makes you want to complete the book at one
stretch and which of course is what happened to me. It was after a long time
that I was reading a book of this genre.

The author is a young finance professional and
this is his first attempt at publication. I do not know how he was able to
manage both the job and the book. This could have happened only if he had been
writing for along time. The poems in the book slacken the pace and I personally
felt that it was not necessary to give so much space for them in the book, but they
do reflect a sensitive and creative mind.

The entire scene of action is in France and Vijay as has written it so
authentically that one would think he had stayed in France for a long period of time. It
is evident that he has done a lot of research in this aspect. Of course the
question arose in my mind as to why he did not base it in Chennai or in Mumbai,
both places he is familiar with and which could have lent additional
authenticity to his writing. I could find three reasons – one that he wanted to
cater to an international audience and the more important reason being that the
kind of relationships he depicts in the book are not possible here. I felt that
the relationships between the main characters, is a bit too impulsive and
contrived, and of course we do not have a Fall season here, which is central to
the book and which is woven around ‘Autumn Leaves’. Only the author can answer
that.

The book could also have been named as ‘The
Closed Door Murders’ but this would have taken the focus away from the author’s
intention to highlight the poems in the book. Since there are a number of books
with a similar title it could have also been named as ‘Autumn Leaves’. But that
is the author’s choice.

There are two or three pages which are devoted
to the solving of a puzzle important to the clues to the happenings in the
book. Though interesting, they may sound like a lecture on mathematics and may
not hold the attention of some readers.

One should acknowledge that the book does keep
you engrossed till the end. A good and well developed plot and well told. The author
has a way of narrating in simple words and sentences and this makes it easy
reading.

It is mentioned that though this is Vijay
Raghav’s first published novel, he has also published a collection of poetic
essays ‘The Peak of all Thoughts’. I am yet to read it but I am sure that he
will be getting into some more serious writing as he has already tested the
waters now.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Albert Camus was born on 7th
November 1913 into a largely illiterate family in the slums of Algiers and died on 4th
January 1960 at the age of forty seven as a Nobel Laureate in a tragic car accident.
In an article on Camus in the September/October 2013 issue of the magazine
‘Philosophy Now’ Ray Cavanaugh writes –

“Among the wreckage was the incomplete
manuscript for his bookThe First Man, and in his pocket the
train ticket that he hadn’t used after accepting the lift to Paris. In an instant, Camus had gone from
being a generational voice to being a corpse on the side of a highway. One
wonders what meaning can be derived from such a sudden change. Or perhaps life
is simply absurd.”

One cannot but wonder that the master of the
absurd met such a fate. Through all his novels and essays the central
underlying theme has been the individual’s quest to understand and overcome the
meaninglessness of life. Ironically the very first novel that Camus wrote but
published subsequently to ‘The Outsider’ was called ‘A Happy Death’. The heroes
of both the novels are called ‘Mersault’. We never know if Camus had found that
elusive happiness which the hero of ‘A Happy Death’ searches. Some quotes from
the book are revealing –

"Only it takes time to be
happy, a lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every
case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to
gain time." The book is actually in two parts – ‘Natural
Death’ and ‘Conscious Death’. In the first the hero kills a rich man for his
money so that he can create time for himself and in the second towards the end
he buys a house near the sea in a village and lives alone, consciously moving
towards death being severely ill. In Camus’s own words-

"At this hour
of night, his life seemed so remote to him, he was so solitary and indifferent
to everything and to himself as well, that Mersault felt he had at last
attained what he was seeking, that the peace which filled him now was born of
that patient self-abandonment he had pursued and achieved with the help of this
warm world so willing to deny him without anger." Severely ill, he dies a happy death: "And stone among
the stones, he returned in the joy of his heart to the truth of the motionless
worlds."

But Camus’s death was neither
natural nor conscious but accidental, something to which none of his heroes
were subjected to. Maybe we should find comfort in his words “What
did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact
that he had existed.”

On happiness itself he had this to say in the
book, “You make the mistake of thinking you have to
choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for
happiness. What matters- all that matters, really- is the will to happiness, a
kind of enormous, ever present consciousness. The rest, women, art, success is
nothing but excuses, a canvas, waiting for our embroideries.”

This book is less talked about than his others,
maybe because it was published much after ‘The Outsider’. It was published in
1971 ten years after Camus death. The other outstanding novel of his is ‘The
Plague’ for which he won the Nobel Prize for literature in the year 1957 at the
age forty four, one of the youngest recipients. For the first time in ‘The
Plague’ one gets an insight into Camus’s views on God –

“I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make
something out. But I've long ceased finding that original”

“Every country priest who visits his
parishioners and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I
do. He'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its
excellence."

“I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what
will happen when all this ends. For the moment I know this; there are sick
people and they need curing.”

“Since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be
better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might
against death, without raising our eyes toward the heaven where He sits in
silence?"

From the above abstracts from The Plague, we
get the impression that he had never really arrived at a conclusion regarding
the existence of God. His concern is more with the plight of the individual and
what he should do alleviate his sufferings and live an authentic life. The two
sentences – “He'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its
excellence” and “there are sick people and they need curing” are a testimony to
his belief. In the book these words are spoken by a doctor who is in the midst
of a plague epidemic. It is the story of medical workers finding solidarity in
their labour. Camus tries to portray that we ultimately have no control over
life and this irrationality is inevitable. His accidental death is a testimony
to his beliefs.

He believed that God is an idea, an abstract
concept constructed by us, made to sit in judgement over what is morally right
and wrong. He continues to believe that making God sit in judgement over us
makes him as mortal as we are and thus ultimately killing him in our heart. It
is in this context that we try to understand Nietzsche when he says “God is
dead”. The absurdity arises when we raise the question as to what is morally
right and what is morally wrong. This cannot be possible without reward and
punishment, in which case there has to be an authority to sit in judgement over
our actions. This is a catch-22 situation and so, is all the more absurd. This
is a situation that we find ourselves in, may be like Sisyphus. But the
redeeming part of Camus’s philosophy is that one has to rebel against this
absurdity and not succumb. He says “Man in order to exist must decide to act”.
Doesn’t this ring a bell for all of us who are bred on the Hindu view of life,
of Karma yoga? Ultimately it is doing one’s duty without expecting the fruits
of action, is a way to redemption. This is brought out so poignantly in that
sentence- “there are sick people and they need curing” uttered by the doctor
whose only concern was discharging his duties as a doctor, and what does one
expect in the middle of a plague epidemic except that he can cure as many
people as possible and therein lies his redemption.

I have resisted the temptation to refer to his
other novels as I have briefly tried to cover them in my earlier post of
February 2012 ‘A Tribute to Albert Camus’. But today on the occasion of the
centennial of his birth, I cannot but refrain from remembering the tragic
circumstances of his death at a very young age. May be if he had lived longer
we would have had the pleasure of more of his works. Though some find his works
depressing, which of course is the case with all existentialist thought, for me
reading him for the first time, his book ‘The Fall’ did prove to be one of the
turning points in my life, my awakening as I call it. But it is ‘The Myth of
Sisyphus’ and the subsequent ‘The Rebel’ that bring out the core of Camus’s
philosophy. All great literature has been centred around recognising the
conditions of human existence and finding solutions

Though Camus was clubbed along with Sartre and
called an existentialist, he never wanted to be labelled either as an
existentialist or an absurdist. In fact Camus says that the only book of ideas
which he published ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ was directed against the existentialist
philosophers.

One cannot also really call him an absurdist
for in the ultimate analysis when one considers ‘The Rebel’ we understand that
he was trying to find a solution to problems of human existence. His thoughts
on this “If we assume nothing has any meaning, then we must conclude that the
world is absurd. But does nothing have any meaning? I have never believed we
could remain at this point” are very revealing.

So much has been written about him and his
works that one is always in danger of repeating what has been said. But it was
the irony involved in the way he died, that the first thought which came to my
mind was ‘A Happy Death’. The celebration of the centennial of his birth cannot
but make us remember the loss that the literary world suffered.

The very fact that despite having a ticket to
travel by train, he opted for a lift in a car and travel by road, would make us,
who are believers in God and destiny, that this was destined to happen,
something preordained. But for Camus it would have been a random event in a
world that was devoid of any inherent meaning.

Apart from my own impressions of Albert Camus
it was necessary for me to refer to the actual quotes from his novels as well
as other commentators on the subject. This was necessary so that a truer and a
more authentic picture of a man who is considered as one of the great
philosopher/writers of the twentieth century is presented. I thought that this
would be my fitting tribute to a man who said “Man in order to exist, must
decide to act”.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.—
Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

This perhaps is the most profound
soliloquy of all Shakespeare’s works.

Back in school, Macbeth (the complete
play) was part of our English literature curriculum. I was nicknamed Macbeth by
my classmates, not that I had murdered someone or was villainous by nature but
because I had the entire book by heart. I still remember most of the passages
and would recite them even while working in the bank. Please do not conclude
that I did not do any work. It was a way of getting the staff to work and
sometimes it did have the desired effect. In fact I remember that the most
effective one was –

If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere
well

It were done quickly. If
th' assassination

Could trammel up the
consequence, and catch

With his surcease success,
that but this blow

Might be the be-all and
the end-all here,

Most of them
could not follow what I had said but they were left in awe at my ‘profound
knowledge’. I did get the desired respect and the work was completed. I never
let them in to a secret- that I seriously did not know what else to do to get
them to work, after efforts at cajoling and threats had failed. Shakespeare I
guess should get the credit for this. Of course I refrained from quoting this
in my credit proposals for I knew that the response would be-

It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

I remember back in school, the English
literature class was taken by the Principal, a Patrician Brother (as they were
called) himself. Apart from teaching us he used to enact the characters in the
play with such conviction that we used to look forward to this period. Now
looking back I can attribute my retentive capabilities as far as Macbeth is
concerned, to him even to this day.

That of course was a light hearted
banter. But coming back to the main purpose of this post is that soliloquy
which I quoted in the beginning. After the passage of so many years this is no
longer an attempt to pass an exam but an attempt to understand the underlying
philosophy. We have our own views on what life is, from the experiences we have
been through. But the thought process has not changed despite the advancements
in science. The idea of God, redemption, punishment and ultimately the
meaninglessness of life still predominates. We have hope and despair and we
talk of good and evil and of a moral fabric that governs our lives.

Macbeth is a good man, a brave warrior
and a loyal subject, who gets corrupted by external forces in a quest for power
and position. It is after the deed is done that he is slowly eaten away by the
guilt of his actions and realizes his own folly and is killed in the end. It is
through this passage that Shakespeare brings out Macbeth’s ultimate realization
and in a way his redemption.

It was way back in the sixteenth century
that Shakespeare wrote all this but we can see an echo of it in the thoughts of
the subsequent modern day philosophers, especially Sartre and Camus and other
existentialists and in the writings of Dostoevsky especially in his Crime and Punishment.

It is in ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ that Camus
examines the meaninglessness of life and the absurd condition of man. He likens
our condition to Sisyphus who was condemned by the Gods to roll a rock up the hill
for eternity. As soon as he reaches the top, it rolls down again and the entire
process is repeated. We live every day in the hope of a better tomorrow. But every
tomorrow gives rise to another tomorrow and slowly this brings us closer to
death. This is what the first four lines of the soliloquy signify. In his book
Camus says that the really tragic moment is when Sisyphus starts his trek down
the hill when he realizes that he has undergo the exercise again and again. There
is no hope. But when he recognises the futility of his condition and the certainty
of his fate he is freed. Similarly in the play ‘Macbeth’ Shakespeare brings out
the true redemption of Macbeth in this play where he acknowledges that all he
had achieved was for nothing, as he was slowly moving towards his death. He equates
our life to that of an actor who as long as he is on stage performs and then
vanishes as soon as his act is finished.

In another of the famous soliloquy from ‘Hamlet’
Shakespeare examines the existential question ‘Why live? For death could be a
worse condition’

To be, or not to be, that is the question:Whether
'tis Nobler in the mind to sufferThe
Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,Or to
take Arms against a Sea of troubles,And by
opposing end them: to die, to sleepNo more;

The dread is that one does not return from the dead. Here Hamlet
is contemplating suicide but ultimately decides against it in this passage-

But
that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Suicide is not an option. In, ‘The Myth
of Sisyphus’ Camus says that the only philosophical question is prolongation of
life or to end it. When man is faced with the meaninglessness of life and the
absurd nature of his condition, he faces the question of suicide. Camus says
that this should not be an option for one does not know death. He says that
once the truth is acknowledged for that is the only way you can overcome it you
should ‘revolt’. This in fact is the subject of his next book ‘The Rebel’

Though the underlying philosophy of two
great literary figures separated by four centuries find an echo in each others
thoughts, their way of getting the message across differs, Shakespeare the
dramatist and Camus the philosopher novelist.